Entries in beer can chicken
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Today it started with a tomato…just a little tomato about the size of a tennis ball.Husband was walking the dog around the RV Park and a little girl gave him a tomato.Such a simple gesture, really.He took it to be kind.Then, he came back home and quite ceremoniously presented it to me.At first I thought, “What the heck am I going to do with this one puny tomato?”Then I thought, “Well, I can’t throw it away.It’s a gift from nature, both human nature (the girl) and Mother Nature.” Next I said to husband, “Come, we must go to Publix Greenwise Market (Publix new competitor to Whole Foods and nicer, I think) so that I can use your gifted tomato for tonight’s dinner."He groaned and said, “We go to the grocery store every single day.Just throw the tomato away.I only took it to please the girl.”I said, “Well now, off to the Greenwise Market to please this girl.”I had a plan. I cannot resist food.Even though we are now living in the RV and have a freezer that will barely hold a carcass the size of Taffy, I still want to buy food.The other day at COSTCO, I absolutely could not pass up the two whole chickens for eight dollars.We do not need two chickens.We don’t even need one chicken, but I could not resist.Yesterday, I decided to make beer can chicken.I have this recipe for it on my website.It requires a large grill such as I have at home.Here at the RV, we have a Weber, but it is a Baby Q, a small Weber.Also, here I have created a bit of an outside kitchen under the awning.I often cook out there as counter space is limited in here.I have my crock pot and electric frying pan out there alongside the Weber.There is an electric outlet for them.I decided to try the beer can chicken in the crock pot. I poured a third of a small can of beer into the bottom of the crock pot and cooked the chicken on high for forty-five minutes before turning it down to low. It came out wonderfully albeit not very crispy.In the final analysis, I am glad that the skin wasn’t crisp.Otherwise, I’d have eaten it.My cholesterol levels thank me. It was exactly like the COSTCO rotisserie chickens. We ate the chicken with a reheated leftover baked potato that we shared, fresh asparagus, reheated leftover Yorkshire puddings and the most delicious gravy made from the pot juices.I was worried that the brown sugar in the rub would render the gravy sweet, but it did not.I think the paprika balanced it. Tonight the chicken will be reincarnated as cold slices of white meat accompanied by a simple salad of organic red leaf lettuce, our gifted tomato and my homemade vinaigrette and a small baguette of organic flour.When one eats both baked potato and Yorkshire pudding accompanied by gravy the evening before, one performs penance the following evening dinner. I’ve written of this before, but I do not understand why anyone would eat iceberg lettuce or those bagged lettuces. Bernie conjectures that it is because Americans do not want to wash the sand from fresh lettuce.The sand tells me that it really was in dirt at some time in it's short life. It takes all of 2 minutes to wash lettuce, roll it in a clean linen tea towel or spin it in a spinner and voila’ fresh lettuce. I also don’t understand bottled salad dressing.It is so full of horrible things like chemical stabilizers and sodium and who knows what else.I also am not sure about the English and salads.I have to force husband to eat a salad.The first time I had salad in the UK, I almost became ill. I was presented a salad plate with a wedge of almost white looking Iceberg lettuce (and, the UK has gorgeous produce in every single supermarket) glopped with what looked like mayonnaise.I almost gagged.I have since learned that the topping was what they call Salad Cream and it comes in a jar like our mayonnaise does. I’ve never really been served a good salad in the UK.France is the place for salads. So…that was today’s Treatise on Nothingness…Who else could rabbit on and on about a tomato, a chicken and some lettuce?